Gear ratios

[quk@sievers.com (Phil Payne)]

In message <l03020907af9e885d58e7@[194.134.3.67]> Tom Nas writes:

> I seem to recall reading that in '85 or '86, Audi boasted that they were
> making quattro an option on _all_ cars, hence the rare Coupe GT Quattro.
> I've never seen an early Diesel quattro, though. It would probably be
> pointless.

Not at all.  The proprietors of our village filling station (Tankstelle Horst 
Wassum) in Hofheim/Taunus had a diesel 80 quattro in the early 1980s.  If 
you'd ever tackled the road from Hofheim up to Langenhain in winter, you'd 
know _exactly_ why.  Horst and I had many debates in the "Zur Rose" about the 
relative advantages of AWD vs. FWD - I had an Audi 80 FWD at the time.
 
The problem I had was tax.  German regulations permitted a company car to cost 
up to DM692/month on a lease, with 1% of the capital value taxed on the 
employee each month.  Anything above DM692/month, or _any_ non-standard 
feature, had to be written down on a three-year straight line.  The "quattro" 
feature was treated like this, and it made the feature ridiculously expensive 
on a company car.  So I couldn't afford it.
 
Wassum ran his diesel quattro until he closed the filling station and turned 
it into a Lada showroom.  He had one of their "toy" 4WDs after that, and did 
nothing but grumble about it.

--
 Phil Payne
 phil@sievers.com
 Committee Member, UK Audi [ur-]quattro Owners Club